Citizens of Armenia flock to the departure terminal at Zvartnots International Airport in Yerevan
BY ARA KHACHATOURIAN
”˜Tis the season for good tidings for the new year.
As has been customary, the leadership of Armenia, including President Serzh Sarkisian and Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan, congratulated the people of Armenia on the new year holiday and both pledged a more prosperous country in the coming year. The catch, if you will, is that both are relying on the citizens of Armenia to band together to ensure the promised prosperity.
On Friday, December 29, the demographer Ruben Yeganyan shared a different, a bleaker, outlook for Armenia in the coming year when he provided an analysis of his research that indicated that in 2017 some 40,000 Armenians had left the country for better opportunities elsewhere. This figure is a 2.5 percent increase from 2016, when 37,500 people left Armenia, according to statistics, for a grand total of 77,500 in two years.
“According to our research data, in the past three to four years, more than 35 percent of households [in Armenia] participated in migration processes,”
